Executive Summary

Survey Results
The Premise
Audits
Selecting Sources
Best Practices: Coverage (Ideas at a glance)
Best Practices: Internal
Changing Coverage
Changing Newsrooms
Pursuing Diversity and Accuracy
Voices in the Newsroom
Appendix A: A Letter to Editors
Time-Out 2000

About this report

Best Practices: Coverage (Ideas at a Glance)

Of 90 respondents to this question, 85 said they had succeeded in changing their coverage to achieve a greater degree of accuracy and authenticity in their news pages. Five said they had not had success. Their successes resulted from deliberate efforts: the creation of new beats, better source development and establishing source databases, newsroom planning and discussions to broaden the way they view stories.

Most of our success has come through interest diversity. For example, we have a reporter who covers non-traditional recreational sports. We have a reporter who covers relationships, including the family, gay and lesbian issues, youth. One reporter covers religion and ethics.
-- Susan Windemuth, senior editor, The Modesto (Calif.) Bee

We are in the midst of a diversity process that has been open to any staff member that is initially attacking four areas: Building more diverse source databases. Developing new ways to meet with the community and to seek out the community. Building a story list of ideas that bring people of color into the paper in new ways and making sure that we do the stories. Tapping the inside expertise we have and developing a seminar for our staff on developing diverse sources.
-- Peter Bhatia, executive editor, The (Portland) Oregonian

Have reporters assigned to 'community' beats, including African-American, Asian-American, Hispanic and gays and lesbians.
-- Sharon Rosenhause, managing editor /news, San Francisco Examiner

The Herald recently added a weekly column about the Catawba Indian Nation, and recently created a community affairs beat by a reporter/columnist who writes about minorities, diversity and human services. She is one of three black columnists who are in a high-profile position at The Herald.
-- Terry Plumb, editor, The (Rock Hill, S.C.) Herald

Creating beats that specifically address some communities, two for Hispanic issues, one for the intersection of cultures, one for senior citizen coverage. In addition, we have shifted the emphasis on some beats. For example, the real estate reporter is consciously covering more renters' issues. The wire desk is including more stories from Mexico and Vietnam in the wire report. Photo staff is conscious of going to diverse neighborhoods when looking for wild art. The Saturday section looks for excursions in different communities. The small-business writer makes an effort to include a wide range of business owners and workers from diverse backgrounds. Entertainment writers look for stories on diverse entertainers and venues. All staff members are reminded to be aware of putting diverse voices in general interest stories.
-- Rebecca Allen, team leader, The Orange County (Calif.) Register

1. We have a community diversity committee that meets monthly, includes 18 community members. It critiques our coverage and makes suggestions from a wide range of perspectives. 2. For all major enterprise packages we pull together diverse pre-budget discussion groups to help plan our story budgets. 3. We keep an active list of minority sources in our computer system and have a deputy news editor in charge of keeping it current.
-- Dennis M. Lyons, executive editor, The (Lansdale, Pa.) Reporter

On Long Island, we've created a demographic cluster of beats on race, immigration, demographics, aging and Hispanic affairs. In Queens, we've structured our city desk operation to cover diverse ethnic communities, and we've added a Caribbean beat. We've beefed up coverage of immigration with two full-time reporters devoted to it - one in Queens and one on Long Island. We've added content: News of the Americas page weekly in Sunday news sections, Sonidos Latinos column on Latin music in Sunday FanFare section, soccer page in Sunday sports section.
-- Charlotte Hall, managing editor, (Long Island, N.Y.) Newsday

We strive continually to tell stories through the people affected. Sounds simple, but when we quote more talking heads, we seem to become less diverse in our sourcing.
-- Jim Gold, executive editor, The (Stockton, Calif.) Record (The paper also has an urban affairs reporter and a writer who covers religion and generations X and Y, which has helped extend coverage to a younger, more diverse segment of the community.)

To accurately reflect our communities: we have created minority contact lists, we actively sought diverse stories and sources, and we added columnists with more diverse views. Readers were invited to attend a readers' forum, and complete surveys. Inviting readers to review our paper is a reflection of our aggressive attempt to broaden our sources and cover stories that affect our readers.
-- Teresa Wilson, The Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times

Created a team of reporters to cover race and demographics; created a youth beat, diversified commentary and opinion pages.
-- David Yarnold, executive editor, San Jose Mercury News

There projects are in the works: 1) A database of sources to help ensure diversity. 2) A higher standard of getting out into the community we don't often reach. 3) More columns asking readers for their help and ideas. 4) More conversations with readers.
-- Ed Jones, managing editor, The (Fredricksburg, Va.) Free Lance-Star

Our eyes and minds are more open to diversity as an aspect of our work. One of my photographers told me he recognizes that he had inadvertently shied away from driving into certain areas of town to look for feature photos, and he's going to alter those habits.
-- Bill Felber, executive editor, The Manhattan (Kan.) Mercury

We are having brainstorming sessions to find ways to be more inclusive, to rely less on official sources.
-- Eileen Lehnert, managing editor, Jackson (Mich.) Citizen Patriot

We track local stories to make sure we maintain a good balance throughout the newspaper. We've also conducted training sessions devoted to diversity issues and note diversity efforts (or missed opportunities) in our daily critique. But the reality is that readers expect us to be inclusive, compelling and accurate - a challenge we all face on a daily basis.
-- Bill Church, managing editor, (Richmond, Ind.) Palladium-Item

Created beats to cover Asians, cultural connections, Latin affairs, small businesses and aging; held community mixers with Koreans, Islamic leaders and Hispanics; provided Spanish language training in Mexico; more renter news.
-- Rebecca Allen, team leader, The Orange County (Calif.) Register

Created an immigration beat, which has now evolved into a Census 2000 beat.
-- Debi Licklider, new initiatives editor, The Philadelphia Daily News

We have striven to find a good mix of stories to include more than merely Judeo-Christian religions to cover on our religion page. We have made an effort to recruit more local women columnists on our edit pages. We published a series on the growing Hispanic population here in October 1998. We aim for a good cross-section of stories to appeal to all ages of our readers on the lifestyle page.
-- Rebecca Collier, managing editor, The (Fishers, Ind.) Daily Ledger

We are mindful across the beats to solicit comment from all segments of our community. It's a way of doing business. Just as important, we're aware of getting a cross section of the community represented in the photos that appear in our paper.
-- Mark Baldwin, managing editor, (Elmira, N.Y.) Star-Gazette

In past years, we have stressed the need to mainstream minority sources in our stories. We've improved a great deal since then, but as a result of our sessions this week, the staff feels we need to redouble those efforts.
-- Edwina Blackwell Clark, assistant managing editor/administration, Dayton (Ohio) Daily News

We recently created a 'neighborhoods' beat, dispatching a native of our city to hit the streets and tell the stories we previously weren't telling. So far, she's done a couple of nice profiles of community leaders who have toiled quietly for decades to improve life in their neighborhoods. She also has written a couple of hard-hitting pieces about issues in the neighborhoods - how a police crackdown on drugs, violence and prostitution is ruffling the feathers of business owners and neighbors who feel inhibited by such a staunch police presence and how the closing down of two public-housing projects in Utica will displace hundreds of people, many of whom have lived there since the 1940s. The beat surely is a step in the right direction but definitely not a total solution.
-- Deanne Bottar, deputy metro editor, (Utica, N.Y.) Observer-Dispatch

Publish a minority affairs column by minority affairs beat reporter. Take a metro-wide view of more issues, including several hot buttons in public education, rather than a piecemeal approach, locality by locality so that no one locality seems to be singled out for negative or positive coverage.
-- Louise Seals, managing editor, Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch

There has been a newsroom-wide push to seek new sources and check our reflexive response of automatically calling the old standbys when a story breaks.
-- Mark Coast, journalism initiative editor, The (Phoenix) Arizona Republic

We started 'community conversations.' They are small discussion sessions between reporters and editors and a community group.
-- Sharon Roberts, assistant managing editor, Austin-American Statesman

We have done a reorganization of sorts on metro in which we've grouped a cluster of reporters who work on urban issues, such as transportation, airport issues, environmental issues.
-- Leona Allen, night city editor, The Dallas Morning News

IDEAS AT A GLANCE

At the Bradenton (Fla.) Herald all reporters and editors have to either attend or organize two or three "listening groups" These are sessions in the community that might include neighbors of a particular area or group.

The (Everett, Wash.) Herald created a "changing cultures" beat to provide continuing coverage of under-reported groups.

The Racine (Wis.) Journal Times (along with several others) created a diversity source list.

The (Florence, Ala.) Times Daily is retooling police coverage to get more trend information in the newspaper, rather than just incident coverage.

Several papers restructured beats to reflect a less-institutional bent. Examples from California: The Fresno Bee has an immigration beat; The (Stockton, Calif.) Record has an urban affairs beat and a reporter covering generations X and Y; and The Orange County (Calif.) Register has created beats to cover Asians, cultural connections, Latin affairs, small businesses and aging. The Modesto Bee has a reporter who covers relationships, including the family, gay and lesbian issues.

The Wausau (Wis.) Daily Herald has a newsroom diversity guru who reads the newspaper every day and marks areas where the paper has done a good job of diversifying its coverage.

The Tri-City (Wash.) Herald has created a minority high school internship program and minority college scholarship program.

The (Spokane, Wash.) Spokesman-Review has created a cultures beat and a building-wide diversity committee, and launched a women's project that reaches out to 1,000 women in the community.

We are initiating a program called Community Connection in which editors and reporters contact and meet or speak to a group that is dissimilar to his/her own lifestyle or demographic. The goal is to return with five suggestions for how we can better cover or reach that segment of our community.
-- Greg Clark, managing editor, (Redding, Calif.) Record Searchlight

Independent of this process, but in roughly the same time frame, we've instituted a monthly reporting system so that reporters and editors can cite their best efforts. Those are used in preparing annual job evaluations. Also, there is a $50 bonus each month for the best, most consistent or most creative length a reporter or editor goes to in order to diversify our report.
-- David Fritz, managing editor, The (Staunton, Va.) Daily News Leader

In addition to staff meetings in which diversity is stressed constantly, we added a 'Diversity Checklist' to the daily budget for a while. We also included a 'Think Diversity' note on all photo assignments.
-- Bob Ray Sanders, vice president and associate editor, Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram

Trained reporters to seek out voices in the middle of an issue rather than simply stop with the extremes.
-- Michael Tonos, executive editor, The (Biloxi-Gulfport, Miss.) Sun Herald

We had diversity training and meetings on coverage for Memorial Day biker weekend, when more than 100,000 young, black visitors come to The Strand. Some ways that it has manifested change: Stories in the paper two days before the weekend added to the context of the event and the weekend; less use of 'loaded' words like 'invasion' of bikers or 'pack' of riders; more diverse sources and stories. We've assigned people to follow local Friendship Teams to get locals' on-the-street perspective.
-- John X. Miller, managing editor, The (Myrtle Beach, S.C.) Sun News